It had been five months since we got the apartment together. It happened four months ago when we started fighting everyday. We were both still only eighteen years old, but we thought getting an apartment together would be a good idea. We thought it would be fun, and we thought it would help us grow together. But instead, we had been growing apart. The fighting started after paying the bills began. Sure, we both had full time jobs, but it was still far more difficult living on our own than either of us expected. We had been together for years, even at our young age, but we didn't expect for this to be the hardest time in our relationship. Looking back, we should have realized... but even five months ago, we were a lot younger than we are now.

"Goddamnit Lilly! Stop leaving on the light when you leave the room!" I could hear Oliver's yell from our bedroom.

I sighed heavily, mentally preparing myself for yet another fight about a stupid thing neither of us really cared about. That's what stress did to us, or does to anyone really... makes us fight with the people we love.

When this part of the agrument happened, him quickly walking into the room, I used to stand up to defend myself. But now I just stayed sitting on the couch, and looked up at him as his feet carried him into our living room. "What?" I asked, staring up at him, too tired to even pretend to fight with him right now.

"Do you have a problem with lightswitches or something Lilly? Is it really that hard to turn off a light?" He asked, glaring at me.

"We've had this dicussion so many times." I simply stated, pushing myself up from the couch. "I just forget, ok?"

"Seriously? You forget? Well it's adding to our electricity bill. Which we have to pay for... believe it or not."

"I believe it. I've been doing it for five months, Oliver."

"You realize it would be a lot lower if you stopped leaving lights on, right?"

"You realize that we pay so much extra money monthly because you just have to have cable? I don't even watch cable! Why do I have to pay for it, if I'm not the one who uses it?"

"You watch cable!" He yelled back at me, becoming slightly red in the face.

"Only when you do! If you aren't home I don't even bother with it!" I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks as I began to glare back at Oliver. We both hated these dumbass agruments. They were about nothing... but once again, money. It's like that's all we ever talked about anymore was money. Whether we were agruing, or just talking about our days... it always went back to money. Tears began to fill my eyes as I realized this.

"Why the hell are you crying?" He couldn't help but scream at me, only because it frustrated him.

"This is all we do!" I screamed back at him, shaking slightly.

"What do you mean this is all we do?"

"All we do is fight about money, discuss money, worry about money! What happened to us Oliver? We're eighteen years old... but all we do is talk about money. That's all we talk to each other about is money. What happened to us?"

"Nothing happened to us!" He yelled still, becoming more hostile towards me for his lack of wanting to believe what we were becoming.

"How can you not see what we're becoming Oliver! We aren't us anymore! We're... damnit, I don't know what we are... but it's not who we were five months ago!"

He just looked at me with glazed over eyes for a few moments, before breaking our eye contact, and walking towards the door. He grabbed his coat off the hanger it was on, and grabbed his keys. "Where are you going?" I weakly asked, feeling myself emotionally and physically began to break down.

"Out." He said, then walked out of our apartment.

Two hours later, I still lay in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, waiting for Oliver to come back. Finally I heard the louding creaking of the door, and waited for him to finish putting all the appropriate things in the right place. I could hear the shuffle of his feet, bringing him to our bedroom.

I switched my eyes from the ceiling over to him, pulling off his shirt and throwing it on the floor. Maybe he didn't realize I was awake, or maybe he didn't care, but all I could do was watch him as he pulled off his jeans. Standing in the middle of the room, in only his boxers, he put his hands on the back of his head and sighed. "She was right." I heard him mutter softly, letting me know that he had no idea I was still awake.

My eyes looked back up at the ceiling, tears glazing over them. I shut my eyes quickly as he pulled the covers to make room for him to slip in between them. The sound of fabric moving rang in my ears, and I imagined him turning towards me, staring at what he thought was the sleeping version of myself. "I love you." He said outloud, and I felt a kiss on my forehead, before feeling both of Oliver's arms wrapping around me. I snuggled up closer to him, remembering when we used to do this every night... before everything changed.

After getting home from school the next day, I sat on the couch, waiting impatiently. Waiting for what, I had no idea. The day was going to go down like every other day. I don't know why I thought anything different was going to happen, or ever going to happen for that matter. But still, everytime I heard something that might have possibly been the front door, my eyes automatically darted right to the door, waiting for the image of Oliver to appear.

What felt like hours later, he did infact walk through the door, and even though I tried my hardest to do it, I couldn't even smile at him. "Hey." I said to him, not even being able to produce the word 'babe' along in the sentence.

"Hey you." He said back, walked over to me, and kissed me on top of the head.

"What was that?" I asked, looking up at him, while he still leaned over my body sitting on the couch.

"I gave you a kiss..." He said, looking clearly very confused.

"You haven't given me a kiss on the top of the head like that in... months..." I said, becoming clearly depressed from this realization.

Instead of saying anything, Oliver instead sat next to me, and pulled me towards him. Almost forgetting what this felt like, I put my face in his chest, and sighed heavily. He put his arm around my middle and squeezed onto me tightly. "I'm sorry Lilly."

I didn't say anything back to him, instead I could feel myself beginning to cry. And instead of him asking me why the hell I was crying, or becoming angry at me for crying about anything "stupid", he held onto me yet even tighter than he had been seconds before.

So we sat there for at least an hour, holding each other; me crying, and Oliver randomly shaking. Finally after wanting to ask since we had been sitting here, I opened my mouth, "What happened to us?"

But Oliver didn't react like I had grown for him to react to things. Instead, I felt another squeeze from him before he said, "Life did."

Not expecting this response, no words came from my mouth as it lay there, opened. Millions of thoughts ran through my mind as we sat there, but none of them seemed to be the right thing to say at a time like this. So instead I settled on something that could at least buy me some time. "What do you mean life happened to us?"

"We should have listened to everyone when they said this would change us. We should have listened when they said we might fight, but it would be worth it in the end. Remember hearing it would be worth it in the end?"

"Yeah. I remember." I said, sitting up, with my back against the arm rest, so I could actually look at him. "But I didn't expect for us to change this much. I didn't expect for you to become bitter... and for me to become heartless."

"You aren't heartless."

"Then why the hell am I always so rude to you? Why the hell do I not even stand up when you start talking to me anymore? I spend all my time in this apartment, sitting on this couch."

"You aren't heartless." He said again. "You still love me. And I still love you."

I didn't say anything, instead I stared down at the blue couch, almost wishing we weren't having this conversation.

"You do still love me, right Lilly?"

I looked up at him, tears staining my cheeks. "Yes. I love you more than anyone on this planet. Anything in this universe."

"Then why didn't you say anything back to me?"

"Because..." I looked back at the couch. "...no matter how much I love you... it still wasn't as much as I loved you before we moved in together."

"Ouch." Was the only thing he said as looked at the wall behind me. "Why do you think that is?" He asked me, after seconds of more silence.

I could feel myself becoming scared and weak, but decided since we were both opening up to each other, I mind as well tell him the truth. "You yell at me." I answered, looking up at him. "We don't talk anymore. And when we do talk it almost always turns into an argument. We used to be so in love, and now I can feel us slipping away from one another. It scares me, and I hate it, but I don't love you like I used to anymore."

"You don't think it scares me? God Lilly, it scares the crap out of me." He put both of his hands on my face, "I don't want to lose you. You think I don't feel us slipping apart? Yeah, I can feel it, and it scares me to death. But never... once... have I questioned whether or not I want to spend the rest of my life with you. It's just part of what becoming an adult is. And believe it or not, this is what we signed up for when we decided we wanted to get an apartment."

I began shaking my head violently, "I didn't sign up for this at all."

The grip he had on my face became tighter. "Yes, we did. We didn't realize it at the time, but we signed up for this. For everything. The fighting, the awkward silences we never used to experience, the talk about money all the time, everything about this we signed up for. But we'll grow out of this. I don't know when it'll happen... but one day we'll look at each other again, and just be able to smile and be ok. One day we'll be able to just watch tv without worrying about how we're going to be able to pay for it that month. One day we'll look at this as the time we grew up together. But for now, we just have to work through it. We have to remember that through our fights, and through our awkward silences, that we still love each other, and nothing about this time in our life is making it fade, instead... it's making it grow."

As his hands slipped off my face, I could tell he was scared his little speech hadn't worked. But instead, I grabbed his face and pulled him towards me, locking our lips together. As I pulled away, I put my forehead against his. "I love you Oliver."

A small smirk appeared on his lips, "I love you too Lilly."

And from that moment on, I knew we would be fine. We would still fight sometimes, sure. And yes, we would still want to kill each other every once in a while. But we would work through it... together. And he was right... one day we would look back at living in this crappy little apartment, and wish we could go back to how young and innocent we were. And together, we would look back at this, and know that this was the greatest part of either of our lives. And as I looked into Oliver's eyes, and could see the slight smile still written on his face, I knew I would never love anyone like I loved Oliver. Never in a million years.

(I haven't written FanFiction in quite some time. Life got a hold of me. But I'm glad I'm back to this. I enjoyed writing this story. Let me know what you think about it lovelies. And thank you for reading.)

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